Dust plumes continued blowing out of the Gobi Desert, and dust spread over large swaths of eastern China on April 27, 2012. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASAís Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image the same day.
Dust plumes arose along the border between China and southeastern Mongolia, sweeping in a counter-clockwise motion around a cloudbank. Farther south, a veil of dust hung over eastern China, with a fairly thick plume stretching across Bo Hai.
Dust was not thick enough over Beijing to hide the city from the satellite sensorís view, but the U.S. Embassy in Beijing reported unhealthy air quality between April 26 and 28 in its Twitter feed.